MAMista (26 page)

‘Fidelistas!' Lucas repeated with great scorn. ‘You are talking of a past age. Fidel Castro's Cuba is dead, unburied only because the economy can't afford the funeral.'

‘Afford! Afford! All you think about is money.'

‘Hold your arm still. How often have I told you that the dressing must be changed twice a day?' Lucas held under his nose the piece of lint, vividly coloured by pus. Ramón said nothing. ‘Disgusting!… And stupid too.' Lucas
dropped the dressing in the bucket and put the tweezers into a dish for boiling. The woman assistant removed it promptly. She looked up nervously and caught Inez's eye, anxious that she might be doing something wrong.

‘Spare me your horror stories, doctor. If you talk to my men as you talk to me, then soon they will be as demoralized as you pretend they are.'

‘I tell your men what I tell you. Keep the wounds clean and dry. In these conditions everything goes septic, and when it does I have no proper medical supplies to treat it. Does that hurt?'

‘Of course it does when you prod it.'

‘And there too?'

‘No.'

‘Surely it hurts a little?'

‘A little,' Ramón admitted.

‘Then say so when I ask. There is enough dirt in that to kill your entire army.'

‘Why do doctors and mothers use the same clichés?'

‘Because men become children in the face of pain.'

‘You leave tomorrow,' Ramón said. ‘Tomorrow there will come a break in the weather. Some people are saying the rains will come early.'

‘There is still a lot to do here,' Lucas said, but he didn't put too much emotion into it. Medical supplies would not be purchased until he spoke with London and then arranged for the money transfer. Knowing the behaviour of banks they'd take as long as possible.

‘Inez will go too,' said Ramón. He ran his fingers over his face in that nervous mannerism that he could not still.

Lucas looked at her but Inez gave no flicker of emotion. Lucas said, ‘From what I see of the map it will be a hard journey for the men.' He was self-conscious about speaking of her in her presence but he continued, ‘She does not have the physical strength … It would need only an infected cut, dysentery or a touch of malaria to …' He didn't want
to say something that Inez might call to mind at some future date when she was suffering such ailments. ‘It would slow us … carrying her would slow us.' He tipped the enamel pan and indicated that Inez should fill it with more boiling water.

‘Always the voice of caution,' said Ramón. ‘That is no philosophy for revolution, my dear doctor.' Lucas waited for him to finish the sentence before bending over him again.

‘This will hurt,' Lucas promised.

When Ramón spoke again, his voice was pitched a little high, and was unnecessarily firm. It was as a man might speak if he released breath held to stifle a gasp of pain. He said, ‘A general thinks of his casualties too early; the surgeon remembers them too long. Both distort a man's good judgement, Lucas.'

‘Or refine it,' said Lucas. ‘Ummm, I thought so. More pus underneath.' Lucas believed that Ramón's boils might be neurotic in origin, although he never hinted that he thought so. He lanced this one for the third time. The pus smelled foul. ‘Sometimes I think you deliberately reinfect them, Ramón,' he said pleasantly.

‘Why would I do that?'

‘So that you can come and show us your unflinching reaction to suffering.'

Ramón lacked a sense of humour. ‘Nonsense. You invent such things to say about me. I am not frightened to show my true reaction to pain. Only a fool would be.'

‘I'm pleased to hear that.'

‘If I am afraid of anything, it is a fear of making the wrong decision. It is a fear of betraying the revolution, or betraying the faith the men have in me. These are my fears, Lucas.'

‘Scabies all right now?'

‘A miracle. No more itching.'

‘Good; but we are almost out of the sulphur ointment.'

They were almost out of everything. Lucas was concerned
about the boils. He was able to remove the core of the largest one but without antibiotics they would keep coming. He glanced up at Ramón's face, trying to decide whether this might be an indication of diabetes. He should check the sugar in the urine really. But, hell, half the army had boils.

It was only at this stage of the conversation that Ramón enquired about Singer. ‘Is the American fit enough?' he asked casually.

‘To walk to Libertad?'

‘Yes.'

‘He has good general health but this morning he sprained his ankle. A few days with his feet up would be good for him.'

‘And the boy Angel Paz?'

‘Are you sending Paz too?'

‘Yes, I am. They will need him.' Lucas looked at Ramón. He wondered why he was sending Paz with the expedition to Tepilo. Was it because the young man was becoming a nuisance? Certainly Paz had proved a disruptive influence. Ramón saw these questions in Lucas' face but did not answer them. ‘We must get Singer to Tepilo. Without that everything else goes wrong: the medical supplies; everything.'

‘Inez should not go,' Lucas said.

‘She is tougher than you, Lucas.'

‘Perhaps.'

‘And much younger,' Ramón said provocatively.

‘Yes.'

‘Also she speaks the language of the Indians and half a dozen Indian dialects. Now that the government is trying to clear the Indians from the central provinces, there is no telling where you might run into them. Some of the tribes are very primitive.'

‘I'm worried about these boils, Ramón. They might develop into carbuncles.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘It means they would spread and incapacitate you. Cripple you.'

‘You both go tomorrow. Do you understand?' Ramón stared fiercely at Lucas and then at Inez. Lucas dropped the scalpel into the tray so that it clattered. He felt Ramón's arm flinch. He could withstand the pain without a tremor but his nerves were in a poor state.

‘Very well,' Lucas said.

Inez put a new dressing on his arm. She used only a fragment of lint, and bound it with a frayed bandage that had been laundered to the state where it was almost falling to pieces.

Ramón watched the care with which she did it. She had implored Ramón to let her go with the expedition and her reasoning was sound. It was better that she went.

Ramón got up to go, clumping across the room with enough force to make the building echo. At the door he looked back at the pair of them. ‘Thank you, Lucas,' he said.

‘You must keep taking the antibiotics.'

Ramón bowed graciously.

Inez sent the nurse away. She had her regular daily tasks to do as well as her work at the surgery. It was unreasonable, but all the women were expected to work twice as hard as the men, just as they were in the outside world. Marx brought no revolution for them.

There were no more patients after Ramón departed. He was always the last one they saw; he insisted that it should be so. Inez took the glass chimney from the lamp and blew out the flame. Fuel was precious and she could tidy up by the light that still came in through the windows. She divided the boiling water into two jugs: one for Lucas and one for herself.

It had been a gruelling day. Foremost in her mind stood the frightening scene with Paz and Singer. The fallout from that one was still to come. She had been present when Lucas inspected Singer's ankle. He'd asked no questions about
how the accident happened but she knew enough about Lucas to know how well he could disguise his feelings. For the time being, all concerned were prepared to forget it. But suppose Singer, or Santos, or some troublemaker, told Lucas that she was having an affair with Angel Paz? Or even that Angel Paz had made a grab for her? That would create a complication that she dreaded to think about.

The confrontation between Paz and Singer had happened when she was already dispirited. She'd become depressed by her work treating the endless boils, running sores, ulcers and fungus conditions. The previous evening they'd done an emergency amputation. It had not turned out well. Alone afterwards she had cried. Inez was not a trained nurse. The tasks she did, and the grim bloody sights she saw, lowered her spirits to a point where at the end of the day she wanted to scream and scream.

She took of her nylon coat and washed herself in the cubicle that provided water to the surgery. Tapped water was a luxury. This supply came from a tank on the roof. She had bought a dozen bars of good soap in Tepilo to avoid the camp soap and its smell of animal fat, but her work in surgery meant using a great deal of it.

Many of the troubles they treated each day could have been avoided by means of soap and water: eye troubles, sores, septic wounds and dirty cuts. She would be content to go somewhere else. She'd be glad to play an active part in a real revolution instead of ministering to this parade of the sick. She looked at her reflection. She didn't look her best in her ill-fitting trousers and the bra she wore under the nylon coat. She hated cheap cotton underwear but the camp laundry had shredded all her silk lingerie.

‘Could you spare me a little of your precious soap, Inez?' She wrapped a towel around herself and went to see Lucas at the ladder. He was worn down too. He hated to show it but it was all too evident to those close to him.

‘I have put some upstairs beside the bowl.'

There was something in her voice that he did not recognize. ‘Have I done something wrong?'

‘No, Lucas. You have done nothing wrong.' She moved away from him.

He looked at her, trying to see what might be troubling her, but she could not meet his scrutiny and turned away. ‘You spoil me,' he said.

She didn't reply. She was standing in the shadows now. Had it been some other woman he might have suspected she was about to weep.

Getting possession of a ladder had enabled Lucas to claim a large upstairs room of the match factory. In it he'd put some battered chairs, a metal bed and an old table where he wrote up his notes each day. Bundled up in the corner was a large mattress. ‘That's all right then,' Lucas said. He picked up his jug of boiling water and went up the steep ladder. He opened the trap-door and climbed into his secret parlour. On the table Inez had arranged a wash bowl and a jug of cold water. He mixed some warm water, took his shaving brush, and lathered his face.

From this window he could look back to see one side of the camp. He could see the thatched huts where the disabled slept, and the place where the ‘hospital' had been until he made them burn it down. Beyond that lay the women's compound, the hut where they made the candles and the kitchens where they made ‘Lucas stew'. Lucas made them put all the hunted animals, from monkeys to rodents, into the pot with the vegetables. They served the stew once a day with a chunk of cassava pancake. Perhaps it was wishful thinking but the stew seemed to be improving the wellbeing of the Northerners who'd been eating the tinned food. The Indians got enough protein. They grabbed a handful of insects – ants and caterpillars – whenever they came across them, but even the hungriest Northerners resisted the offer of such snacks.

From here Lucas could smell the stew. He also could
smell the laundry, an opensided building always enveloped in steamy mist. The men and women guerrillas were not dressed like an army. Here in the jungle they wore any old clothes they could get hold of: straw hats, shorts and T-shirts. Many women wore bright clothes. Their skirts and blouses had the faded reds and greens that came from vegetable dyes and the simple striped patterns that were all that the crude looms of the villagers could produce.

A patrol marched across the flat space they used as a parade ground. Angel Paz, wearing a camouflaged suit and a pack, was leading it. Sergeant Santos was in attendance. Lucas recognized other faces too. The man carrying the enormous old machine gun was Novillo. The one with the tripod was Tito, his number two. Both had been treated by Lucas but he could no longer remember the less serious cases. There were so many.

Paz was suffering in the heat but trying not to show it. A fresh bruise had darkened his face, Lucas noticed. He had no reason to associate it with Singer's sprained ankle and decided it was probably the result of some mishap in the jungle. The rest of them were mostly Indians: tough young fellows with wiry strength and impassive faces. The whitest faces were the two identical twins: cheerful kids, absurdly proud of the shape of their heads and their features which distinguished them as of European descent. These would be the ones accompanying Lucas next day. He looked at them curiously, wondering if they would be up to such a journey.

Lucas began to shave. Looking back at him from an irregular-shaped piece of mirror was a red-eyed fellow with unkempt hair and tender skin that hurt as he dragged the blade across it. Downstairs he heard Inez sorting through the surgical instruments. She would take them across to the laundry and boil them there. He had objected at first that it was unhygienic, but the big stoves enabled her to do the job in a fraction of the time it took to do it here. And she would not be using valuable kerosene.

The bugle sounded. The jungle fowl scattered, fluttering up into the air. Some of them got to the low branches of trees. ‘Flag parade!' Inez called. ‘Won't be long.' She would let the instruments boil while she attended the ceremony.

‘Okay,' Lucas said. On the other side of the compound he saw René taking a bowl of hot soup to the hut where Singer slept. There was no guard there. It had been accepted that Singer would not run away. Especially now that he had a twisted ankle.

Lucas began to prepare for the journey. Using his bed as a table he piled up his shirts, trousers and underwear that Inez had brought from the laundry. They were ironed and that surprised him. He hadn't known there was an iron here anywhere. And socks; lots of socks.

He put some firelighters – blocks of paraffin wax – into a plastic bag and sealed it with medical tape. He put the bag into a tin and sealed that with tape too. Making a fire could mean the difference between life and death. Then he made another package to protect five boxes of matches and wedged his last six cheroots into it too. He sorted through a few oddments he'd found when exploring the derelict factory. There were brass buttons, some twine pieces knotted carefully into a whole length, a fragment of oilskin torn from a packing case lining, a half-used tube of machine grease, a bootlace and some old coins. He placed the assortment into the oilskin and tied it with the bootlace.